No Way Out
by Hidden.Forever
Summary: Sherlock can't save humanity from itself. After all, heroes don't exist. Dystopian (technology) AU


**A/N: I discovered this story...in my outbox. I had sent the first scene to my beta. This was 3-4 years ago, so I had completely forgotten about this. I read my messages and very, very slowly remembered what it was about. I spontaneously decided to write the rest of the story before I chickened out and to share it with you. The first scene (500 words) maybe differs as writing style, but I decided to leave it "as-is", with minimal changes. However, this discrepancy (if there exists one,) also works from the story in a "meta" point of view (you'll see). I tried to keep as close as possible to the original, but I was a different person back then, outlooks change. Also, writing style wise, it's closer to the fics written after the first season (because that's when I imagined it).**

 **All my gratitude to my beta, Alba Nix. This story would not had been here today, if it weren't for her.**

One ordinary Tuesday, your meddlesome brother summons you to the Diogenes Club. He had wanted to come to your flat instead, but you outright refused – 221 B is yours, a soothing refuge from a hectic world. You'd much rather step out of your comfort zone than let him intrude in on your privacy.

You enter the one of the Club's private rooms, brashly stomping to make your presence known and your displeasure even more so. Mycroft looks up, folding his newspaper and putting it away. Politely, he invites you to take a seat. You do so, but not before you turn the chair the other way around, your arms draped on the back rest. He raises an eyebrow at the defiant gesture, but says nothing of it.

A mechanical snow leopard enters the room, carrying a small box in its jaws. Even though Mycroft's familiar is nothing but cogs and gears, Anthea carries herself with impressive grace and there's a certain spark of intelligence in her eyes that sets her apart from other robot assistants, like Mrs. Hudson meowing mongrel. However, your short-lived collaboration with a familiar ended the day it mistook one of your experiments for garbage.

Mycroft opens the box brought by Anthea and shows you the contents – a pair of violet contact lenses. You huff in disdain; you have no use for ridiculous party props. Shaking his head at your childish behavior, he begins explaining. No mere lenses, they contain the full capabilities of a computer and are capable of immersing the user in an alternate, virtual reality. A person wearing the lenses would be able to access anywhere, anytime, all the knowledge that mankind has amassed in millennia. In a few years, they will be available to the general public.

It is painfully obvious this particular pair is meant for you. You snort. Oh, the perils of having the British government as your infuriating brother. You grudgingly put them on, sarcastic comment already on the tip of the tongue. You blink once, twice, until the lenses settle.

In that moment, you see. Your mind leaps, whirrs, comes to life; there are data, all the data you've ever dreamt of knowing and there's more, so much more you're struggling to keep up – there are gunshot angles, blood splatter patterns, cold cases, medical records… the world fitting on two silicon disks, barely one centimeter in diameter. It would be so easy...

You swallow, once. There is so much power in this lenses that you're shaking. All there was and all that ever will be known, all contained in a diminutive device no larger than the nails of your thumbs. Your expectations were wrong and this unsettles you. You lash out the only way you know how - at your brother. You stand up abruptly, the wooden chair screeching.

You tell Mycroft that you don't need this crutch of his; you can do your work just fine. He has controlled your entire life and you've had enough of his interfering, thank you very much. You get out before he can get a word in edgewise. You just want to be left alone.

* * *

You come home one day and you absentmindedly reach for the tea that Mrs. Hudson would sometimes leave for you on the mantlepiece, by the skull. It's not there. You call out for her, but she doesn't reply. Instead, her motley tomcat of a familiar comes into your apartment and brings you a steaming cup of...mint tea, judging by the leaves simmering inside. For the tiniest of seconds you worry about her, but you remember the pattern of the glass shards you saw hours ago and Mrs. Hudson's floral cup is immediately forgotten on the table, the tea turning cold.

Later that evening you come across her on the stairs, and she apologizes profusely. "I'm sorry for not bringing you the tea, dear, but my nephew had just brought me these new lenses to try..."

* * *

It has been a month since Lestrade last called you. You never thought you'd see the day when those imbeciles at the police force would manage to tie their shoes without your help but yes, it seems that day has come. Congratulations are in order then. You dress in a hurry and head out of the apartment. You've been cooped up inside for too long, you want a challenge, a puzzle to sink you teeth in. Sure, a cold case would be preferable but you'd take even one of the mundane, the clear-and-cut ones. You crave...

Sally doesn't look happy to see you, as usual. "Oh, lookey who's come here today. Mister high-and-mighty consulting detective, Sherlock. " She changes her voice to a solemn, deeper one, at odds with the disdain on her face."I regret to...actually, I don't regret at all to inform you that we will no longer be requiring your services." Her shoulders slump and she sounds tired."At this point, I don't think they will even require mine. So sod off."

"Don't be silly, Sally, of course you need me," you reply. "You, of course, were always expendable."

She looks at you as if she were talking to a child. "Oh, silly, didn't you hear? About the lenses?" Sally sounds gleeful, but her fake smile doesn't quite reach her eyes. " There's no murder that goes unsolved these days, most of the cold cases have been demystified or will be taken care of sometime in the future. Go home and do...whatever it is you do in your free time, you freak."

* * *

The inside of your head buzzes and your skin itches, but it's nothing compared with how bad you'll feel soon. It's imperative that you find another dose. You try to open the windows, but they won't budge. The door is locked as well. Your apartment looks as if it were ransacked by hordes of barbarians. You've already searched everything methodically. You cannot give up now. You start again. Nothing in your wardrobe. Nothing on the table or under the table. Behind the painting. Behind the bookcase. Behind your bed. Under your bed. Inside the stuffing of your mattress. Within the drawer. Drawer, secret compartment. Drawer, second secret compartment. Chair. Chair padding. Desk. Desk leg. Carpet. Pillow. Door. Peephole. Skull. Fireplace. Bookshelves. Books. Pages. Skull. Books. Pages. Skull. Pages. Skull...

You wake up on the floor, in the pool of your own vomit. With her paw, Anthea hands you a towel to clean yourself up with. You snarl at her, you don't need her help. Or any familiar's help, for that matter.

This time, Mycroft couldn't even be bothered to move his fat ass over here. Figures.

* * *

When you saw the part-time working student at the newspaperstand with violet eyes, you told yourself it was nothing but a passing fad. But then you noticed another one, a clerk at Tesco that was handing you your groceries. The taxi driver who not so subtly kept checking on you through his front view mirror wore lenses as well. Soon enough, news were circulating about a teenager bullied into suicide for not wearing them. It was a trend, all right, but, to your annoyance, it wouldn't fade away. It became the norm. Everyone in London, to your annoyance, had violet eyes.

One day, the young newspaper seller didn't show up at his stand. He was the first of many.

* * *

You think of yourself as an intellectual man, first and foremost. Mind over matter. Yet, sinking your axe into Lestrade's door felt so satisfying. Raw. You savour it.

It only sank half a centimeter in the first time, so you revise your strategy. You go way back with your hands, then you swing the axe in a circular motion to make maximum use of the little strength you possess. Better. You keep at it, viciously. "So pedestrian", Mycroft would say. But your brother is not here. You haven't seen him in a long time.

Sure, you could have called for Lestrade's black mutt familiar to open the door for you, but where was the satisfaction in that?

"Lestrade," you announce, "I turned your door into smithereens. Mycroft can pay for that, for all I care".

You find Lestrade in his bedroom, eyes glazed over, lost to the world.

"Lestrade, get your ass off the bed and give me a case," you demand.

No response.

"Lestrade, I... I had a relapse. About three months ago. I got better, no thanks to Mycroft." You watch him carefully, to see if he reacts.

You try a different tactic. "As much as you don't care about your ex-wife, I found her body dumped in the river, multiple stab wounds, eyes gouged out with a spoon...No, nothing? I thought such things mattered to you. I mean, they're dead, so what difference does it make if they had their heads cleanly chopped off or were put through a meat shredder but you people care." You swallow. "Cared."

"The streets of London are deserted, Lestrade. Sure, there are some familiars scuttling along on errands, but they don't count. On the plus side, no new crimes. Nobody bothers to poison their husbands when they can evade into a world of their choosing for the rest of their lives. Nobody stabs hookers in a fit of passion when the lenses can supplant the appeal of worldly pleasures. No criminal masterminds out there spinning their webs of plots when they can compete with an enemy so alluring and powerful."

Silence.

"Remember the days when I told people the truth about themselves and then, for some reason, they would get horribly offended? Didn't you think it was odd that our society teaches its children to never tell lies and yet, it never prepares them to hear the truth?"

"I'm telling you the truth now. This life you think you're living right now, Lestrade, is composed of nothing but figments of your imagination. It's a nice little concoction of impossible dreams. Wake up and face the reality that you're a recently divorced, unemployed man in his fourties with basically no future prospects or real skills of any kind. Don't deceive yourself, you're hardly unique in that regard."

"Oh, and Lestrade? This is the part where you punch me and call me an impertinent bastard. Just saying."

Several minutes passed.

"I..." you pause. "I need you, Lestrade. Give me something to do with myself, or else I go mad. I am going mad, spinning in circles in my own head. I want you to reprimand me when I cross this invisible line of 'acceptable social behaviour'. I...You see, I was aware from a young age that I didn't quite fit in with the others, but that was fine. I watched, I learned and, soon enough, I was able to mimic them perfectly. I was intelligent enough to replicate emotions outwardly, even when the emotion itself didn't exist."

You take a deep breath.

"The emotion was rarely there because I am not like other people. There were other things that made me tick, that kept me going. But that was quite alright. I was ok with myself. Sometimes people tolerated me, sometimes they hated my guts. But you, Greg, were one of the few who accepted me for who I was, and it meant the world to me."

More minutes passed in silence.

"I don't swear, I view it as the mark of the lower classes. Yet, I think this occasion warrants it. Fuck it, I'm leaving."

You leave Lestrade's apartment fuming, stepping on a heap of wooden chips that once used to be a door.

* * *

Days, months blur into one another. You turn your attention towards literature, classics in particular, and write critics for an audience that will never read them. You take great pleasure in kicking some whimpering familiars out of the libraries in London, you secure the buildings and claim them as your own. You spend weeks poring over books and tomes from various periods and fields. It keeps you busy.

From time to time you go for a walk. You remember the magnificent city for what it once was, a hubbub of noise and activity. A myriad of people on its streets, all tangled together in an intricate web of passions and desires, all yours to unravel.

You'll never see or talk to another human being again and you've accepted that. It surprises you to see how much the realisation of being truly, utterly alone pains you. You once shouted at your brother that you'd wish for nothing more than to be left alone but oh, how wrong you were. You did not want this, never this. You admitted to Lestrade that you told people uncomfortable truths about themselves, but oh, who would now let the oh-so-high-and-mighty consulting detective know when he is wrong? No one, that is. Not now, not ever.

You want to scream. What would be the point?

The man tapping you on your shoulders startles you. You take in his appearance: blonde, military bearing, a little soft around the edges. Blue-greenish eyes stare back at you. They leave you speechless.

"Oh, um, sorry, didn't mean to scare you." He clears his throat. "Let me try again. My name is John Watson, what about yours?"


End file.
